A set of very important questions bloggers should ask themselves daily: How did I spend my day? Did I take any steps towards reaching my goals? Did I improve my chances today? Did I improve my blog? Spread the word about it? Worked on increasing the readership and increasing the revenue? Was I a blog producer or was I a blog consumer?
We all have dreams, we all have goals we want to reach, but we are not all taking daily steps towards these dreams and these goals.
Don’t be a blog consumer, be a blog producer. Take action today. Produce something valuable to people.
Too many people sit and talk about starting a blog and making money from their blog, but talking about it is as far as most go. Most people never take the action to make their dreams come true.
If you are currently blogging, you have already started your professional online presence. You are on the right track to improve your chances. Just by starting a blog you are much closer to reaching your goals.
But just starting a blog is not enough. Hence the question, what did you do today? Blogging is not about being able to say that you have a blog. It is not about the key post that you wrote last month that went viral.
It is about performing consistently day after day and helping a few people at a time. Perform day in and day out, be available via email / comments / Twitter, build your blog loyalist one person at a time.
Be careful not to spend too much time reading your RSS newsreader or your Twitter stream instead of working on your own blog. You do not get better by thinking or talking or reading about it – you get better by taking action and doing it.
Produce a new blog post that will help people, that people will care about. Help people with their questions / problems. Take actions towards your dreams. Don’t be a blog consumer, be a blog producer!
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{ 23 comments }
Producer!
Marko,
These questions and points shouldn’t get old because people are easily distracted and their day has left them behind: a total bust for many. My concern, for many aspiring bloggers is that they follow to closely what the “experts are both saying and doing” that they themselves lose sight of being a producer…
Part of the issue is that people (includes bloggers because after all, we are human), worry about comparing themselves to one another- specifically high profile bloggers.
Bloggers, want to reach your goals? Don’t pretend and try to become like someone else, be you. Press in, challenge yourself, allow your life to invade your blogging: help your blogging and living to jibe.
Marko, sorry about going on but your post clearly stuck a chord!
Being a producer feels amazing. Consumers become lazy, slow, unfocused complacent, no longer perform and so on.
-Mig
@Miguel Wickert – Feel free to go on and on. I liked your comment. Sometimes I even publish reader’s comments as a completely new blog posts, so I do appreciate when people write whatever they feel like.
@Stephen – There might come a point when you are satisfied with your blog, you feel it is perfect, there is nothing to add to it. You get a lot of traffic from SEO even without writing anything new. Then it might be a good option to take it a bit easy and maybe focus on establishing another project. This post was written from an earlier perspective, when you have a new blog, when you would like to get it established. At that point it is not enough just to read and consume other blogs, you must work on producing something that will help establish your own blog.
Yep I understand, as another day has gone by without writing a blog post, mind you I have been at it for 3 years. In all honestly I do not want to write something unless I believe it will be of interest to my readers and some days I cannot find the inspiration.
So thanks for the reminder to keep it up
Regards
Stephen
Thanks I needed this. I need to focus on what I can do today to get what I want!
Appreciate it, haha.. I will start to do that as well. I mean, readers tend to have neat, helpful things to say when we give them a chance.
Later.
-Mig
You recently started following me on Twitter and I’ve been keeping up with your posts. However, I was wondering what your take on ” life” or personal blogs. I understand it is harder to get followers and audience with this style, but I don’t see myself as being able to write a topical blog at this point.
@Sarah – I see “personal” blogs as kind of diaries of life of those bloggers. It is there mostly for family, friends, online friends etc. It is not there for promotional, commercial, branding purposes. Not something that you would need to promote to random people you do not know. Many of tips on my blog can be used for “personal” blogs but I focus mostly on those that plan to use their blogs to establish themselves as experts in their field, to improve their network, their career, maybe even start making a living from a blog. And for those purposes being specific and writing about a specific topic is a must.
Great post. I couldn’t agree more with what you’re saying. Some days I am absolutely a blog consumer, feeding off of all of the great information out there, wasting my life away reading others’ posts.
@Trevor – hehehe nice comment! I personally read blogs as well for inspiration, but there must be a balance somewhere as by just reading you will not get far. So read a bit, but always make sure to incorporate that what you have read / learned into your own blog and make it more attractive to your potential readers.
It is sometimes hard to find a balance between spending time doing other parts of blogging (commenting, social media, etc) and actually spending time working on your own site. The latter should always take precedence, since there would be no point marketing yourself if your own site isn’t doing good.
~ Kristi
could be both! But certainly producing is always better than consuming.
I spend way too much time being a consumer, but I have started to produce, and am starting to get there.
Slowly.
On the other hand, if you only produce blog posts but don’t read and comment on others, it’s not good either. There has to be balance. Right?
@Jutta – Definitely, you should not neglect either of them, but majority of bloggers spend most time consuming instead of producing. And I believe that it should be the other way around.
I produce on blog posting day and I consume blogs on non-posting days. Part of the routine during non-posting days is to cool my overheated brain – perhaps from too much blog consumption? – and pass the gas in Twitter. I’m just kidding. I meant I intersperse my blog reading on non-posting days with blog commenting, tweeting, and occasional fun games online. “.)
Hi Marko,
I believe this is my first time here, and I’m glad to have read such a nice post! Indeed, most people fail to be successful as bloggers because they simply stay inactive – they don’t work towards achieving their goals, hence there can’t be any progress.
There’s a great phrase from the Pursuit of Happiness movie that I like a lot: “You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can’t do it. You want something? Go get it. Period.”
If you want success, go get it. Period.
Well, I am both a producer and a consumer. But when I am at work, I try to work like a pro, I usually do not surf other sites.
Producer and consummer…
Well said Marko!
Sometimes I spend too much time trying to learn and read about what others are doing when I should be producing content. There needs to be a balance between the two – sometimes it's just easier to read than to write.
Actually I’m confused about the difference between those two words “Consume” and “Produce” that’s probably the reason I didn’t understand the most part of this post.
You are passive if you consume, you just read blog posts. You need to be active and start writing (producing) blog posts to get somewhere with your own blog.
I agree, with @ Marko Saric. You have to really focus on putting good things out yourself. People will come and want to stay and return if you put good things on your blog.